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OPENING
REMARKS OF CHAIRMAN DUNCAN HUNTER
Consideration of
House Resolution 499 |
Tonight, the
committee will consider House Resolution 499,
a resolution of inquiry concerning the
Victoria Plame matter.
Last summer, a
news column publicly identified Ms. Plame as a
CIA employee and suggested that information on
her identity was provided by senior members of
the Administration. The Intelligence
Identities Protection Act of 1982 makes it a
crime for someone with access to classified
information to pass on the identity of a
covert agent if that person knew that the
United States government was taking action to
protect the identity of the covert agent.
Accordingly,
the CIA referred this matter to the Justice
Department, which appropriately began an
investigation. The President ordered his staff
to cooperate, while the Attorney General
subsequently recused himself from the
investigation and his deputy appointed a
career U.S. attorney as a special counsel to
look into the matter. Since then, according to
press reports, the special counsel has
convened a grand jury.
Based on these
developments, it is apparent to me that the
system is working exactly as it was designed
to work. Non-partisan career prosecutors are
conducting a professional investigation and
have all the authority they require to indict
any persons suspected of criminal activity.
Nevertheless,
some believe that Congress should insert
itself into this criminal investigation and
have introduced House Resolution 499
requesting all information related to the
matter that might be in the possession of the
President and three cabinet secretaries,
including the Secretary of Defense.
The resolution
was accordingly referred to four committees in
the House – Intelligence, Armed Services,
International Relations and Judiciary. As
members may recall, resolutions of inquiry
such as H Res 499 are considered privileged on
the House floor, after a period of 14
legislative days goes by without the
committees of jurisdiction taking action.
However, if the committees do act within that
period, then the resolution loses its
privileged status.
On the
substance involved, there is no question that
Congressional investigations are important and
useful when the Executive Branch fails in its
law enforcement responsibilities. But no one
can responsibly make the case that this is the
situation in this instance. Indeed, the
Justice Department acted quickly to begin an
investigation, appointed a special counsel,
and reportedly convened a grand jury long
before this resolution was introduced.
On the
contrary, rather than helping resolve the
matter, this resolution will have the opposite
effect. It won’t add to the efforts of the
special counsel or grand jury, as they both
have much broader investigative and
prosecutorial powers than we do. It won’t help
the Administration stop internal leaks, since
the most effective step that can be taken
would be to find and prosecute the offending
individuals.
This resolution
may instead inadvertently end up helping the
possible target of the investigation by
publicly revealing the evidence that may exist
against him or her. This would undoubtedly
directly undermine the special counsel’s
investigation and make any resulting criminal
prosecution that much harder.
Therefore, I
believe that the premise and purpose behind
this resolution is simply a bad idea. So did
the Intelligence Committee, which adversely
reported the resolution on a vote of 10-3 a
few weeks ago. And so did the Judiciary and
International Relations committees which also
acted earlier today by adversely reporting
this resolution.
Accordingly, I
strongly recommend that we follow suit with an
adverse recommendation to the House.
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